People

We’ve met some wonderful people from all over the world during our stay in Orkney, as well as the locals who are definitely some of the nicest people we’ve met.

Our first encounter was on the boat when I tried a bit of my German out. I think they understood me OK and they were kind and answered in English. We also must have chatted to a local person returning to the island because when we finally called on Kate (camp site commandant) , 2 weeks later, she had known when we arrived (Pat and Mal are here pass it on) and had been keeping tabs on us since, you know spotting the van in supermarket car parks etc. You can’t pull a sicky up here and get away with it!

We still got an invite for tea and biscuits, boy do they know how to serve tea, strong and hot with a plate full of cakes! I also had a quick cookery lesson, you know the sort ‘just throw in what you’ve got’. She’s never seen my fridge! I remember Susan (Sister-in-Law) calling and finding the fridge empty, except for the milk and margarine and she was horrified, so much so that next time she called she brought dinner with her and cooked it at our house, now that’s what I call a welcome visitor. Back to Kate , she gave me a few tips and I copied out a recipe for Hudson Chicken……’stuff chicken pieces with chopped honey roast ham, spring onion, grated white cheese all mixed with cream and egg and dip the whole thing in beaten egg and coat in ruskolene (sounds like an engine oil) and deep fry’, it sounds tasty and we wondered whether it had got it’s origins in the days of the Hudson Bay Company. Stromness was the harbour where ships bound for Hudson Bay called to replenish fresh water supplies, in fact the well used by shipping, including Captain Cook, is on the High Street and of course it has the commemorating plaque above it, oh and it’s lit at night, now don’t get excited it’s a dirty, dingy, full of rubbish, uncared for hole in the ground!

I don’t know how I got to sailing ships from tea and biscuits but that’s what Orkney does to you, here you are in the present and suddenly you’re transported back through the years to any date between 5000 BC and 2007 AD.

On one of our beach walks we met up with a couple from Holland. They were having a wonderful time and had camped in the dunes. They were extolling the virtues of Shetland and told me about the Otter sanctuary and Dolphins in the harbour - oh how I wish I didn’t get seasick, it’s an 8 hour crossing and I find 2 hours more than enough!

Next to get noted in my little red book were two German women cycle camping. They flew into Edinburgh and had cycled up country to John O'Groats, caught the ferry to South Ronaldsay and pedalled up the island and over the Churchill Barriers (more on them later) to Burray, Glimps Holm, Lamb Holm and onto the Mainland. We met up with them at the Broch of Gurness, a fortified tower with dwellings around it. The whole area was surrounded by a ditch and was in use from between 200 and 100 BC. We were taking some aerial photographs and managed to include the two Germans. They were thrilled when we printed a picture for them.


They were looking for somewhere to camp and we told them about Brough of Birsay, about a 15 mile ride but well worth the effort. Acting as good Samaritans we let them have a head start and then guided them in and made sure they had plenty of water for overnight. Imagine our surprise when they pitched their tents smack in the middle of the track used by vehicles to get along the coast, still they were happy and we know they survived because we caught up with them at Skaill Bay the next evening. They were really enjoying the scenery and peacefulness of the place.

Jan- whom we met 4 years ago whilst she was looking for a place to buy in Orkney invited us over for a meal. She’s now settled, happy and has a small nursery (plants) and has forgotten her native Yorkshire, well at least she doesn’t miss it.


She collects wool, with good intentions of making something with it one day and I was able to give her some new ideas for scarves and bags. She really is a fantastic knitter and when we called to see her a week or so later she’d been busy making scarves and hats, really lovely ones.

Since arriving in Orkney she has become the proud owner of a few raw fleeces, and I just had to have a look. The one that fascinated me was a longwool fleece (neither Jan nor I know which longwool breed it is) and it was really mucky but felt quite silky to the touch and I’m now the proud owner of half a carrier bag full. Now she needs a spinning wheel so we had a quick lesson on my wheel and we left her practising with a drop spindle (like the ones prehistoric woman used).

After a bad night we got up at 5 o’clock and started sulking. As the day wore on the weather improved and we ended up in a little car park near Stromness and overlooking Graemsay Sound. Tired after our bad night we decide to have 40 winks. After about 20 we were rudely awakened by a huge lorry dumping 20 ton of gravel outside our back door. Stupified from sleep we started imagining all sorts of horrible headlines ‘tourists buried in gravel’ ‘missing tourists and bumpy surface in carpark not connected, council insist it’s just bad workmanship’ and various other things.

Pat collared two workmen wandering about with their hands in their pockets and it turned out they were waiting for the JCB to arrive so that the lane and the car park could have the potholes filled in. He must have complained (looking for sympathy) about me wanting to travel to the other islands and they certainly commiserated with him and agreed that I should be happy ‘cos I was already on an island! It made Pat’s day, finally someone on his side and then we beat a hasty retreat before the JCB showed up, God knows we didn’t want to meet him on a single track road!

We met up with George again, 2 years older but still carrying his newspaper clippings about with him. He walks the path from Stromness along Graemsay Sound two or three times a day, weather permitting, and really enjoys a chat. Last time we met him he was telling us about the days of sailing ships when a 1000 ships would be in the harbour for the Herring. Now one massive factory ship does the work of the 1000 ships plus the gutting and salting. I remember reading a novel about women travelling with the Herring fleet for the gutting and salting, travelling from Shetland down to Scarborough and it suddenly all seemed so real.

One of the paper clippings was about the only Orcadian King!! He is obviously proud of it and it tells the story of a young Orcadian man joining a ship and ending up in the Hawaiian Islands where he stayed. I can’t remember why but after a while they crowned him King of one of the small islands. Next time I meet George I’ll get another read and make some proper notes.

The best of our Kite Aerial Photos are put onto ‘Flickr’ an internet site for photographers of all standards. Through this site we’ve met some really interesting people and this holiday we added one more to our list. Craig is an Orcadian and also takes photo’s with a kite, actually he uses a camera for the photo's and the kite to lift the camera. Well we just had to meet to compare kites and kit. We spent a great afternoon at Barnhouse, a 5000 year old village near to The Stones of Stenness. Of course we had to have a ‘fly in’ of all the kites and take some photo’s. It’s a big site so to get the whole of the village in can be quite tricky but a few oblique shots covers most of it.

We were also told off by a chap for ‘playing’ on an historical site! He wasn’t impressed with the photographic side of it and eventually went off. This is the first time either of us has had a negative response to KAP.

Anyway we really enjoyed meeting Craig who can help us with some of the Orcadian words and also places to visit, not necessarily on the tourist trail. I shall be picking his brains ready for the next year. I just hope that this Blog entry is all correct - he’s a reporter!

We had another Samaritan day, this time an old lady who approached us at an archaeological dig. Luckily for her the tour had just finished and she walked up to the gate and started babbling on about how she’d thought she was lost and couldn’t remember what time the bus left but she’d made it in time. After a few seconds we decided that she wasn’t where she though or ought to be. We were right, she’d been at the Ring of Brodgar and followed a cut grass path and then turned right on the road instead of left. She couldn’t see very well and when she saw a gaggle of people she’d homed in. She was about a mile away with 10 minutes to go. Our van was parked up the road but Pat managed to get her a lift straight away and we really hope she made her bus, if only for the sake of the chap who took her , well what on earth was he going to do with her if the bus had already left?

Back at Skaill again, we spent a lot of time at Skaill, we couldn’t resist introducing ourselves to an Aberdonian couple in a white van, a Nissan that they had converted themselves. The cooker was attached to the inside of the back door and if it was wet or windy they threw a tarpaulin over the open doors making a tent. They had built in boxes for food and clothes but Pat was fascinated by the bed! It was a board on pulleys that they kept in the roof and lowered onto the cupboards at night. A brilliant space saving device.

I’ve noticed whilst writing this that all the people we met were wild campers and that’s why we all got on so well, we were all of the same mindset, dislike of crowds and noise as well as being mean! We did pass through the campsite at Stromness a couple of times and it was so busy that you’d have heard next door breathing never mind about TV’s and radios, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

think Penny was the bubbliest person we met this holiday. She walked her dogs, Nell and Brodie, along Skaill beach twice a day.

She’d married an Orcadian and when the South and teaching got too much for them they moved back to Orkney and have never regretted the decision for a minute. I asked her if she ever took the beach and view for granted and as expected she answered in the negative. It’s a living picture, always different, always changing colour and content, from entirely empty beach to sunbathers, from empty seas to Dolphins, Whales and Seals, from flat calm water to a raging, boiling couldron.

We got very friendly with Penny and the dogs and joined her on one of her walks. I just had to have a go with these new fangled ball throwers that every dog owner seems to have. They’re great, you can really get the ball a long way but after an hour of use the old arm muscles start to complain and the next day don’t want to work at all!

Again we had a lot in common, and on one of the beach walks we were happily comparing the patterns cut out of the sand by a raging torrent of water belching over the beach, to the Grand Canyon in miniature.

As the water spread over the beach on it’s way to the sea it spread out in a fan pattern cutting gulleys and undercutting the edges, a real mini delta that remodels itself twice a day instead of taking thousands of years.

One evening the clouds were all lit up by the setting sun but it was those opposit the sunset! It was a mind boggling phenomenon to me but obviously happened a lot in the Orkney summer months.


It seemed to me that the whole horizon was red and orange, this was the time when Penny confessed to owning a book on clouds, it so happened that I have the same book, so we agreed to be ‘sad’ together. Actually the book is quite good and one chapter is devoted to a visit to Billings Gate Market where he is trying to find which fish the Mackerel sky is named after, is anyone interested in how he got on?

Many of the people we met were incomers but because of where they had income to, they were all very much the same type of person, friendly, giving, open, honest and loved nature and the peace and quiet. I’ll finish this entry with the words of a retired policeman (incomer) ‘This is the nearest to Utopia you’ll find on this planet’. we fully agree with him.